Plasmon

Plasmon,
a leading provider of a wide range of automated data storage solutions,
demonstrated this year at CeBIT a working
prototype of its new 30GB, Ultra Density Optical (UDO) drives and media.
UDO is about to become the next generation standard on 5.25-inch optical
drive technology, replacing the existing magneto-optical (MO) base of
drives and discs of the same diameter. We were able to see at the company's
booth world’s
first working blue-violet laser optical disk drive. It supports the new UDO
disks and it is developed for professional data
storage
markets,
covering
archiving,
document
imaging, call centers, email archiving, GIS, medical, telecom, banking, insurance,
legal and government. The new drive delivers the performance of the older
5.25” MO drives,
the longevity of 12-inch True WORM (Write Once Read Many) and the cost effectiveness
of a DVD solution.

UDO
uses 405nm blue-violet laser and phase change technology adapted from the
Blu-Ray
DVD-type products. UDO drives operate with a 8KB sector size with direct
overwrite capability. When writing data to Rewritable and Write Once media,
the UDO drive uses only two passes: write and verify.

Phase Change technology is based on a specially designed
recording layer that can exist in both amorphous and
crystalline states and is transformed between these two
states by the heat from a precision laser. UDO's blue violet
laser is focused through a 0.7 numerical aperture (NA) lens, which generates
a very small spot on the recording layer, transforming
the state of the media and creating a data mark.
The same laser operating under a lower power reads these
data marks. Phase Change recording is a totally nonmagnetic process,
providing very stable data storage that is completely impervious to damage
from magnetic field
exposure and bit drift.

UDO drives read/write data to the media while spinning at
a Constant Angular Velocity (CAV). The drive is capable of
managing different data rates as the optical head moves
from outside tracks (higher speed) to inside tracks (lower
speed).

UDO drives make use of enhanced Reed-Solomon Error
Correction Code (ECC) and Erasure Correction algorithms
to ensure that data can be accurately read from the media
despite physical defects or contamination (defect correction). The combination
of these two techniques provides a 4x improvement in ECC
handling over MO drives. UDO drives have also
implemented an optimized read-ahead defect handling
methodology that provides much greater performance when
managing secondary media defects.

The
media cartridges are dimensionally identical to current 5.25” MO,
providing compatibility with the existing 5.25” library automation
machines and robotics.

Both WORM and rewritable
media will also be available. This first generation product provides 30GB
capacity and a fast
data transfer rate of up to 8MB/s. Future generations of drives and media
will increase the usable capacity of discs to 60GB and 120GB.
Backward read capability will be maintained throughout the
whole product roadmap.

In the following picture you can see the UDO disc inside
the cartridge:

More information about the UDO technology will be available
soon from our site.